


Dashed to Pieces

by heartofstanding



Category: Being Human (UK)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-28 04:41:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17780750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartofstanding/pseuds/heartofstanding
Summary: In the aftermath of Series 2, Mitchell struggles and George tries not to.





	Dashed to Pieces

> At night, I stretched across him, rivers of blood, the dark wood, singing with all my skin and bone. _Please keep him safe. Let him lay his head on my chest and we will be like sailors, swimming in the sound of it, dashed to pieces._  
>  \- Richard Siken, Saying Your Names

For two weeks now, George has sat in the backseat of the car with Mitchell's heavy head on his lap, stroking through filthy black hair and never daring to acknowledge the blood in it. George shakes when Mitchell shakes, cries when Mitchell cries and shares with him in his fits of paranoia, terror and despair. It's terrible - he's terrible. Mitchell needs someone to look after him, but George can only follow Mitchell's lead.

It's why, he thinks, Nina stays as long as she does in the end.

But there's a word for what they are – or _words_ , really – and Nina knows them too well. Once she figures it out, she's gone in a flurry of exasperated looks and lengthy arguments, half-shouted, half-whispered. While it hurts – _really hurts_ – that she's going, George isn't surprised. Nina's always deserved better, George's _always_ known this, and it's about time she worked it out. It's about time they stopped fucking around and ruining each other's lives.

So it's two weeks since they fled Kemp's facility, two weeks since George got Mitchell back and two weeks since they lost Annie, and Nina's going. The arguments have stopped now, she doesn't look at him now, and she's slowly retreating from them, packing things up one bit at a time.

Even so, it comes as a surprise the day she goes.

+

They rent a falling down cottage in the middle of nowhere with too many empty rooms.

There's no hot water most of the time – George thinks they only get five minutes' worth at midnight – so he's forever boiling water. The wallpaper is torn, the paint is peeling, and he walks around the room with a mug of boiling water in his hands, trying to warm himself. It rains most days and no one finds them.

Mitchell's quiet now, quiet and cold and half-dead. Gone are the fits of shaking and tears, his terror and paranoia are now vanquished. The despair lingers, casts his bones in ice. He spends most hours in bed and when he's not, he sits on the sofa with an empty mug in his hands, listening to the radio replaying tragedy after tragedy. It's pornographic, really.

At least he's not going anywhere.

+

George gets a job at a cafe nearby. He makes coffee and learns to wield a sandwich toaster and overhears a great variety of small-town gossip that means nothing to him. He makes enough to pay the rent and feed himself. Mitchell isn't eating. The days seem too long, covered in grey cloud and drizzle. The cottage is always silent when George gets back, but Mitchell is always there, in some dark corner or hiding under the shadows of his bed.

Slowly, George begins to understand that just because Mitchell isn't moving doesn't mean he's not leaving. George is losing him to a slow collapse, a poison in his veins that gradually climbs into his heart to turn his flesh into a ruin.

George cannot lose anyone else. He feels like a ghost as he walks through the cottage, looking for Annie, looking for Nina and finding only Mitchell growing paler, thinner and going further and further away without even leaving the house.

George cannot let him go. They cannot go on like this. They've lost too much already. Nina's gone and she'll be making a better life for herself than she could have had with them. There's no hope of getting Annie back, just a vague whisper in the back of his head that promises that Mitchell will think up _something_ and it'll work. George can't lose Mitchell. He just can't.

The cafe keeps the roof, which by some miracle doesn't leak when it rains, over their head and a paltry amount of food on the table. It also eats hours from George's days, and he can't take time off, can't quit his job and focus on keeping Mitchell with him. But when he's home, he makes it a point to find Mitchell. If the radio is on, he turns it off and ignore the startled look of protest Mitchell sends him. He sits beside Mitchell, close enough that he can feel the faint heat from his skin and smell of the stale scents of iron and cigarette on his skin. He brings a book, an dog-eared paperback he found in the basement, and reads it because he doesn't know what to say.

Mitchell says nothing, either, though sometimes George thinks he falls asleep, suddenly slumping to one side, face pressed against George's shoulder. And sometimes, just sometimes, George thinks up generic little questions – _have you eaten? what were you listening to? have you showered today? what do you want for tea? when's your birthday again, d'you want to go out for dinner at the pub?_ – and Mitchell gives him short, quiet answers.

George doesn't know if it's doing any good or not, but, he thinks, it must be.

+

One evening, a storm sweeps up over the surrounding lands, the green paddocks and hillocks, turning the grey sky eerie. The windows rattle in their sills, the cottage shakes with each fierce roll of thunder and rain strikes against the glass as if it would shatter it. George eats dinner by the window, watching the weather wreak havoc with the lands, light fast-fading. He gets up and turns the light on only for the power to go and the house to be plunged into darkness.

George swears loudly.

He's sort of expected this, ever since the storm hit, though he'd hoped to be wrong. He knows that under the kitchen sink, there's a torch, a box of candles and a half-empty packet of matches. It's so close, but with the house in darkness, the distance seems a hundred times greater. Still, sitting in the black of the room with only the rain for company, the heater dead, he can't ignore it forever.

It takes him what feels like six hours to get into the kitchen, tripping over seemingly every piece of furniture in the house. The torch's light is dying from the moment George switches it on, but it gives him enough light to light a candle. He takes a handful and finds Mitchell, still in his room. He doesn't look to have noticed the power's off, but he does look mildly surprised to see George holding a candle.

'What—'

'The power's off,' George says, 'Storm must knocked out some power lines. Should be back on in a few hours.'

'A few hours? Out here?' Mitchell looks up at the dark ceiling, the shadows lying in its corners. 'You're fucking joking. It'll be tomorrow, at the earliest.'

'Oh,' George says, 'Right.' He looks down at the bed Mitchell's sitting on, the double bed pressed hard against the wall because the room's too small for anything else. 'Well, budge up a bit, all right?'

'What?'

'It's cold, it's getter colder and the heaters aren't working.' George sets down the lit candle, lights a few more for extra illumination. 'And the firewood's all outside, getting wet. We need to share body-heat, or we'll be freeze into disturbing-looking statues.'

Mitchell opens his mouth, closes it, then opens it again, 'I don't run too hot.'

'You're warmer than the rest of the house,' George says, 'Come on, I don't really want to freeze my balls off waiting for you to test that theory.'

Mitchell sighs heavily and rolls his eyes in the gloom. But at least he toes off his boots and shoves himself under the covers. George shivers, checking the room one last time before scrambling into bed, immediately pressing up tight to Mitchell. Mitchell's right – he's more lukewarm than hot, but given the temperature of the rest of the house, George isn't too keen on moving away.

'Christ,' Mitchell mutters, 'You're like a furnace.'

+

George thinks he sleeps a bit, or maybe he doesn't, but the storm's still going, the candles are still burning and Mitchell's still next to him, body awake and held stiffly. George presses closer to him, the only warmth he's got left.

'It's alright, you know,' George says, 'We'll be alright.'

Mitchell bites his lip.

'You don't know what I've done,' he says, voice quiet, so quiet, and colder than the house.

The thing is, George thinks he does. He thinks it's been dancing around in front of him and he thinks that if he wanted to, the clues would just fall together before his eyes and there wouldn't be any question of what Mitchell's done. But George doesn't want to do that, doesn't want to admit, he doesn't want Mitchell to confess to it. The thought leaves a heavy weight in his belly, on his tongue, and bitter seeps down his throat.

Mitchell's all he's got left.

'It doesn't matter,' George says, reaching up with one hand to pat Mitchell's shoulder. 'Even if I knew, it wouldn't change things. I need you too much.'

Mitchell shudders, his body trembling hard against George's.

The thunder roars outside, the glass shakes in its frame, and George takes Mitchell's face in his hands, directs it down so that, for the first time in what feels like years, Mitchell's eyes meet his.

' I just really need to have you here right now,' George whispers, 'Here with me.'

He's not drunk, it's not the full moons for another two weeks and there's no adrenalin rush to cloud his mind, but somehow, _somehow_ , he does the utterly stupid thing of leaning across the bed, the short gap between him and Mitchell, and kissing him.

Mitchell's eyes shutter, grow distant, and George draws back a fraction.

'You shouldn't,' Mitchell says, swallowing, 'You shouldn't be here. You should find Nina, be with her.'

'I'm not,' George says, resting one hand on Mitchell's collarbone. He could explain, tell Mitchell about how Nina deserved better, but he didn't want to. Not now, when Mitchell feels so fragile, like he's made up of nothing but shattered pieces of glass and rivers of blood. Like his skin could tear at any moment and it could all come tumbling out and he couldn't be pieced back together again.

Mitchell's chest heaves beneath his hand, air dragged into his lungs and then released, but, at last, his head dips into a small nod, his face heavy with the shadows cast by the flickering candles. George pushes himself closer, kisses him again, pressing his hands against the sharp planes of his face, and Mitchell returns the kiss, tears glittering in his eyes.

 _Don't_ , George wants to say, _don't cry_ , I won't be able to stand it if you do, but he doesn't dare. Mitchell seems to hear him anyway, eyes slipping shut as his lips press more firmly against George's. His body sinks back into the bed, hands going up to touch George, to wrap around his shoulders.

**Author's Note:**

> Written in 2015 for a prompt given to me by bending-sickle.


End file.
